{"id":237952,"date":"2026-03-26T19:31:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/237952\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T19:31:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:31:34","slug":"bay-area-brewery-pulls-co2-from-the-air-to-keep-beer-flowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/237952\/","title":{"rendered":"Bay Area Brewery Pulls CO2 From the Air to Keep Beer Flowing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s actually critical that if you want technologies which can replace what we have,\u201d Lackner said, \u201cwhether this is air capture or something else, that you get affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solar panels, he said, used to cost hundreds of times more than they do today and only started meaningfully contributing to renewable energy supplies once their cost came down.<\/p>\n

\u201cFundamentally, this was a business decision,\u201d said Damian Fagan, CEO of Almanac. His company saves 15% on the per-pound cost of CO2. That adds up pretty quickly, Fagan said, in the range of tens of thousands of dollars a year. The additional sustainability is great, he said, and fits in with the company\u2019s goals of locally sourcing ingredients. But his primary interest was avoiding future disruptions in supply. For that, he would even be willing to pay more per pound.<\/p>\n

Almanac shut down operations for two days last fall when shipments of CO2 didn\u2019t arrive from their suppliers. They couldn\u2019t can beer, so they couldn\u2019t sell it. Their brewing schedule backed up. To catch up, they had to add a third shift and staff worked till midnight. The CO2 industry infrastructure \u2013 part of the heavily regulated oil and gas industry \u2013 is aging and degrading, so Fagan expects reliability will only get worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe writing\u2019s on the wall: the infrastructure that produces CO2, particularly here in California, is fading quickly,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd CO2 is literally intrinsic to the brewing process \u2014 it\u2019s like electricity or water. If you don\u2019t have them, we are just dead in the water. We can\u2019t operate without it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The Aircapture system at Almanac Adventureland and Brewery in Alameda on March 20, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Almanac promotes its use of the Aircapture technology through branding on its \u201cFlow\u201d beer, a light and bright West Coast Pale Ale. Eventually, they plan to use it in all their beers and to power their lines that push the beer to the 30 taps in the taproom.<\/p>\n

While carbonation improves the aroma and taste of the beer, customers won\u2019t notice a difference between the industrially-provided CO2 and the locally-sourced CO2 from the parking lot. There\u2019s no effect on taste, and Aircapture said the purity from their technology significantly exceeds industry standards.<\/p>\n

The direct air capture machine sits in the brewery\u2019s parking lot. A large fan sucks air through a pipe. A ceramic substrate grabs onto the carbon dioxide in the air.<\/p>\n

\"\"Brenden Dobel prepares fermenter tanks for brewing beer at Almanac Adventureland and Brewery in Alameda on March 20, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n

The CO2 is then released via a blast of steam and piped into the brewery and a trailer with Aircapture\u2019s equipment. The CO2 is cooled down, concentrated, turned into liquid, purified and sent to tanks.<\/p>\n

Almanac pays for the carbon dioxide it uses, but not directly for the equipment. The machine is designed to last 20 years. If Almanac expands and needs more CO2, it can add additional units.<\/p>\n

This year, the brewery expects to use around 120,000 pounds to brew 15 thousand barrels of beer \u2014 and that number is rising.<\/p>\n

\"\"Damian Fagan, CEO at Almanac Beer Co., at Almanac Adventureland and Brewery in Alameda on March 20, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cOur usage is only going up,\u201d Fagan said.<\/p>\n

Almanac is, to the best of Aircapture\u2019s knowledge, the first brewery to use direct air capture technology to carbonate its beer. But it almost certainly won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s next project is with Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world\u2019s largest brewer, installing the technology at a brewery in the Canary Islands later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s actually critical that if you want technologies which can replace what we have,\u201d Lackner said, \u201cwhether this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-237952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}